Welcome everyone to another NEW TeaDay. I hope you will share it with all of us. Shall we brew and share what is in our cups today, and maybe some photos too?

Today's TeaPoll and discussion topic, contentment. We obviously are all TeaLovers and very serious about our TEAS. I want to know, are you fully content with your tea enjoyment in its totality, entirety, wholeness, or is there something you either feel you need to or want to change in order to improve your enjoyment? Please share the details with us.

I am as always looking forward to sharing TeaDay with everyone, bottoms up!

While a Japanese style tea teahouse complete with tatami mats and hearth would increase my "tea experience", I'm pretty happy with my ability to try most kinds of teas that I want and the ability to brew them in the appropriate vessels...

I'm pretty happy with the conditions that I have at present. It's usually quiet and peaceful. The cat is usually curled up nearby. I have decent-sized patio doors that the tea table is by, with a west facing window - so usually a good deal of sun around the time I brew. Only thing I wish: that my kettle had a sturdy handle. It was like they expended all their effort into making a great kettle, and then slap-dashed a handle together!

Have a couple more sessions of the 2012 JGY, and then time to open another Ye Sheng hongcha for the "office" tea.

Theoretically I could enjoy TRANSCENDENTAL TEA in any setting, with almost any equipment, assuming filtered water and a reliable heat source are available. With this in mind, a rough scale of scenarios of possible tea enjoyment, in order of preference:

1) An exquisite, heavenly palace of sound and light, of an etheric paradise, gloriously ablaze in gold and violet flames in every hall. In the magnificent company of Batman, the X-Men, Ghandi, Ascended Masters, King Kong, David Ross, Olympian Gods, non-PMSing Goddesses, angelic beings clothed in light, the life force of stars, a chupacabra, and civil demons. Seated at mile-long, conscious, bio-interactive tables that sing and play games with you. Teas are the rarest, most highly aromatic treasures in the Universe. Served in divine tea ware of ecstatic liquid light, graced with esoteric symbols--wrought in pure gold forms precisely 12 atoms thick--exalting Life and Oneness. THIS is a tea party.

2) With the Mad Hatter. The Johnny Depp incarnation. I would bring poltergeists. Cupcakes from Safeway if I'm in a hurry. Never invite yourself over empty-handed. Miss Manners said so in the newspaper many years ago!

3) Underneath an ancient tree with three bears, by a magic cottage with a unicorn in the barn. Rustic furniture crafted by a maiden, a mother, and a crone, embedded with everlasting flowers and pressed fairies. Tea is steeped in vessels fashioned from rare earth ores harvested by Djinn, cured by the breath of seven dragons, and polished by Golem with diamond sandpaper. Here, refined sugar is beautifying, gluten is anti-aging, and dairy cures every ailment known and unknown to man. Caution: Decline playing hide and seek with the prince. He turns you into a frog. Just sayin.

6) Questionable stuff a paper cup decorated with advertisements, from a local cafe populated by homework-doers, anonymous characters pretending to work on iPads, and tourists.

7) A concrete alleyway. Overbrewed in a tacky San Francisco souvenir mug with Golden Gate Bridge screen print, on top of a dumpster lid. Malicious pigeon on a ledge above, positioning to aim with his tail end.

Desolate warehouse infested with rats and zombies. A two-and-a-half-legged card table propped up by telephone books, with a cracked pleather top, decorated with dried motor oil mixed with radioactive waste, and a 6.5"x9" part of a corner munched by a zombie. Decomposing zombie (yeah, that's what you get for wrecking my table) under a tarp makes a nicer bench than scrap metal. The beans are starting to burn in the aluminum can sitting over the fire. I am expecting a guest in one hour. Unsure if he is human. No problem. This flame thrower doesn't just boil water. Oooo, butterfly! Wait--it's one of those viscious mutant moths trying to get into my tea leaves. Good, because flame blasted chicken-moth goes great with burned beans and oolong.

Sure still quite far from my goal, at least my goal is not impossible I want a small room with only tatami and low desk. Big window and view on japanese style garden, it doesn't need to be big. Currently using about a square meter on desk beside pc.

... and of course teaware, suitable pots and cups for each kind and situation